Be a gamer, love your product—Ars’ tips for gaming PR

Working in public relations in the gaming world is a terrible job. If gamers …

Working in the PR business is a thankless, grinding thing. When you slip up, everyone knows about it. When do you well, no one thinks about it. The point of the PR professional in gaming is simple: to get a publisher's games talked about, and to get review scores that are as high as possible. That can lead to some borderline villainous behavior, and to a bad reputation for the job as a whole.

So it's no coincidence that game writers tend to have an antagonistic relationship with the PR industry. We're going to throw out all the bad stories and the stereotypes and focus on the three most important strategies for good PR. These are simple things that go deeper than simply following gaming writers on Twitter, and are much more effective. Why isn't everyone doing them? Well, let's take a look.

Be a part of the company you're representing.

When looking for sources for this story, the thing that stuck out was that of the public relations professionals that gaming writers enjoyed working with, almost all were internal, not simply a contractor with an outside firm.

While stressing that both internal and external PR had merit, Aram Jabbari, the manager of Public Relations and Sales for Atlus USA, spoke strongly about the merits of developers having internal PR resources.

"With as many games as we have, and as involved as the majority of them are—being RPGs and all—it becomes vital to have quick, efficient exchange of information, and to be able to have questions answered rapidly," he explained. "With an internal PR team, knowledge exchange is more rapid, and the folks tasked with communicating to the gaming public and press end up being in a much better position in terms of having an intimate understanding of the games. It’s also certainly easier to attempt wittiness when the responsibility for the effort failing rests squarely on one set of shoulders."

Jabbari is near legendary in the world of game writing for press releases that are actually fun to read, e-mails that are answered promptly, and the ease with which even smaller news outlets have received review samples. Being that easy to work with, mixed with a deep knowledge of his product, makes Jabbari extremely effective at his job: getting gaming writers to write about Atlus games.

The next person we talked to was Garth Chouteau, the senior director of Public Relations with PopCap games, and he had even stronger words for internal PR. "I'd go so far as to say that in-house PR is virtually always better than outside support via contractor or agency," he told Ars. "The opportunity to completely immerse oneself in the product or service in question is always more possible from within the company proper. Sure, an agency or contractor can be a valuable source of fresh ideas and perspective from time to time, but in general, in-house is the way to go. This is probably even more true in the video games industry, where really being familiar with the products/services you represent is critical."

Which brings us to the next point...

Play your own games

"Oh, you gotta drink the kool-aid, no question. First, this is invaluable for enabling the communications professional to put him/herself in the shoes of the consumer... If you don't know what's great about your games, how are you really going to communicate the benefits to consumers?" Chouteau told Ars.

"Second, and no less important, [it is important] for the purposes of being able to speak intelligently to the journalists who write about video games. I make a point of having played at least 100 hours of each of our games before any journalist sees them. And since a small number of long-lead publications need access to each game 3-4 months prior to official launch, I'm playing very early builds and watching each game 'evolve' as it nears the finish line. It's a very cool perspective to have and it helps inform my conversations with journalists as they experience the game...I can actually say 'ya know, we tried that idea in an earlier build of the game, but it simply wasn't as much fun' and so forth."

Jabbari also stresses the importance of playing the product. "How can you explain to someone how exciting a new innovation or feature is if you have no concept of its significance? How can you persuade someone to try something different if you lack a fundamental knowledge of what makes it worthwhile?" he asked. Although, working at Atlus, that presents certain challenges: "That said, 'play' and 'finish' mean two different things in this context. Multiple 100+ hour RPGs can be hazardous to your productivity, and so I cannot boast to have finished every Atlus title released during my tenure."

You have to love gaming

Notice a theme yet? If you're not in love with gaming as an industry, this is probably not the job for you. Enthusiasm goes a long way. "I’ve been in love with games as long as I can remember. I started on the PC, with classic Sierra and Lucasarts adventure games, later owning and adoring just about every home console from the NES onward," Jabbari said. "Gaming is my life, in more ways than one. I’m constantly picking up games I've yet to try, be they new releases or classics I passed on previously."

"Atlus might be my first gig in the industry, but in truth, I've been sailing these seas since I had enough coordination to handle a mouse and keyboard."

We spoke with game industry veteran and former Nintendo PR Manager Eric Walter about this issue, and he agreed that being excited by the industry as a whole is crucial. " I can't tell you how many times I've praised competitor's products or mentioned to a reporter, 'you should really talk to so and so at Microsoft or Ubisoft or EA, I'll bet they have an interesting and different take on the topic.' The more media coverage the gaming industry gets—and the better, more well-rounded media coverage—the better we're all going to be. PR people aren't always out for themselves."

What have we learned?

Dealing with many people in the PR business is a painful affair. They only know the bullet points for each game, they become uncomfortable when asked substantial questions, and, way too often, looks are prized over skill. This doesn't have to be the case. By cultivating your own PR team, hiring gamers who honestly love the product and know it well, and staying up to date on the industry as a whole, you're guaranteed to have a PR team that more effectively talks to gaming writers, the mainstream media, and the gamers themselves.